NASA is preparing for an initial test run of a "flying saucer" that will one day take astronauts to Mars.
Intended to transport heavy loads and eventually, people, the disk-like spacecraft will zoom over the Hawaiian island of Kauai in June, New Scientist reported.
The Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator spacecraft will launch from the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility this summer.
"It may seem obvious, but the difference between landing and crashing is stopping," said Allen Chen at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., as quoted by New Scientist. "We really only have two options for stopping at Mars: rockets and aerodynamic drag." Chen oversaw the Curiosity rover's landing on Mars in 2012.
Vital inflatable technology in the LDSD will curb the vehicle's speed after it comes into the thinner Martian atmosphere. Using a "balloon-like decelerator" and a huge parachute, the spacecraft is designed to slow down due to the added wind resistance of the inflating device.
The advanced system should allow the spacecraft to safely transport a load even bigger than the Mars Curiosity rover, which is about the size of a car and the heaviest thing landed with earlier technology.
"Personally, I think it's a game-changer. You could take a mass to the surface equal to something like one to 10 Curiosities," said Robert Braun at the Georgia Institute of Technology, according to New Scientist. "Think about it like a bridge for humans to Mars. This is the next step in a sequence of technologies that would need to be developed."
For the first test in Hawaii, the team will send up a vehicle equipped with the inflating system to around 23 miles above the Pacific Ocean. Three more test flights are planned for later, and the results will be analyzed before mission managers take further steps.
See Now: OnePlus 6: How Different Will It Be From OnePlus 5?
